Diddy Kong Racing was a great game. I cleaned it out entirely. Forwards and Backwards. Every Balloon, Every Gold Coin, Forwards and Backwards. You don’t spend that kind of time on a game unless it’s good.

The only other MKart clones I can think of that I played at any length were Wacky Wheels (Splitscreen Hedgehog Deathmatch FTW) and Sonic Drift (Eight Bit Goodness for Game Gear).

Crash Team Racing by Naughty Dog for the PS1 – been playing it regularly since 1999 when it came out – even on the PS2. Smooth controls, well balanced powerups to keep things even – nearly perfect. No other cart game I’ve played even comes close to this classic.

Throwing in my vote with Ed — for the original PS1 Crash Team Racing. It plays like a Kart game should. The controls are good, with just the right amount of lax and forgiveness in them. Sometimes Kart developers seem to forget that they aren’t building a racing sim and make the controls too finicky. Here everything plays just right. The sequels always had something off, but this is the perfect package. Great racing and a really fun battle mode.

Keep the scans coming I love them! Every now and then one triggers a flood of memories from my youth. My 3 boys have been brought up on not just the latest games but all the retro gaming I can introduce them too. Only yesterday we were all playing Ghouls ‘n Ghosts on no less than a PSP Megadrive emulator, PC Megadrive emulator and a DS Megadrive emulator! It was a race to see who could finish the game first with the invincibility cheat turned on as this game was insanely hard!